Trapped in Space (1995)

Stuck in Space

During a routine space flight disaster strikes when an asteroid crashes into a spaceship. With the captain having bailed out in the only rescue pod and without warning anyone else of the impending disaster it leaves five crew members and a dog trapped aboard the crippled vehicle. With the crash causing a loss of oxygen the outlook for the five remaining crew is bleak and soon they start to turn on each other as their situation worsens.

One of my favourite Alfred Hitchcock movies is "Lifeboat", it is about a group of people stuck floating aimlessly in a lifeboat and having to deal with the tension as their situation gets progressively worse. The trouble is that when you have watched "Lifeboat" or any other movie which deals with a similar desperate situation and then go to watch another it becomes too familiar. That is part of my issues with "Trapped in Space" as whilst the spaceship is more expansive than a lifeboat much of the drama and conflict has the same foundations and so it ends up familiar.

That familiarity extends to the action and the characters as we have cool heroes, tough women, a nasty one and so on all of which have little depth and say not only cliche lines but cheesy lines as well, especially when it comes to MacNeil played by Jack Wagner. In fact the acting is what I would call people doing their job but none of them pushing themselves to do any more than just typical which in a way is the best way to sum up "Trapped in Space" as it is typical on every level from the acting through to the sets.

The knock on effect of this is that you don't care what happens and who survives by the time the credits roll as there is no depth to any of it. In fact and most astonishingly they really missed a trick as we have this cute little Scottie dog but rather than making the dog a character in its own right it ends up being ignored and so you don't even care what happens to it.

What this all boils down to is that "Trapped in Space" delivers a familiar situation but fails to do anything more than typical with it. It means that occasionally it is good but more often than not it is below average and in the end fails to make you care for any of the characters and the situation they find themselves in.